Posts Tagged misery

So Garfield was right. Diet is DIE with a t! I haven’t been posting much because I have been really, seriously, horribly, awfully miserable with this diet. It’s kind of hard to explain, though I have spent a lot of time trying to explain to my friends and my pain dr. It’s hard for people not having the experience (or not being *me* I guess) to grasp my particular problem with it.

The diet itself is that not bad as diets go. It’s not about portion control so it’s not like we are starving because we are eating a teaspoon of food. It’s not about counting calories or weighing food, so it’s not like we are eating .05 ounce of celery and a 1 ounce skinless chicken breast. It’s not about bland “diet” food, so we aren’t eating boiled chicken breast and lettuce salad with no dressing.

Phase 1 was kind of rough, I will not lie. Not being able to eat fruit was really hard. I love fruit and not being able to have ANY fruit for 2 weeks was brutally hard, but not having pasta, rice, and bread for 2 weeks was a bit frustrating, but not that bad. Now we can add “good” versions of those things slowly back in to our diet, so it’s all fine. To clarify “good” means 100% whole grain breads, 100% whole wheat pasta etc. In other words, no white flour/refined flour/sugar type stuff. I can have my granny smith apples and most other fruit again so that’s all good.

The problem I was (am to a certain extent) having is that fact that I was losing NO weight. John was losing weight just fine, though he hit a bit of a plateau when I first made him the Peanut Butter cookies (shown in the previous post) 😉 He’s losing weight again now, though. I, on the other hand, was NOT cheating AT ALL and was losing nothing.

This was exceptionally depressing for me and really, really frustrating. I didn’t expect the pounds to just fly off me since I have a lot of factors in play, but I didn’t expect to be 2 weeks in and have lost NOTHING. I guess I should have been happy that I wasn’t gaining weight, since when they first suggested I switch to a low-fat diet, I immediately GAINED 20 pounds (which triggered a thyroid test, when I complained about that and they are now trying to regulate my meds for my “sluggish” thryoid).

We went and got a new digital scale that is larger so it’s easier for me to stand on (and read), but it wasn’t being any kinder to me than the old one. lol Today, a friend told me about Live Strong and how he and some friends are using the Myplate option there to keep a food diary. He is considering gastric bypass and I have been trying to talk him out of it in favor of losing weight himself naturally, so I told him I was willing to do whatever with him and encouraged him to try this South Beach thing with John and I. He is in California, however, so we can’t really do it “together” in terms of getting together.

So I signed up for the Live Strong dealy so I could keep a food diary with him and we could encourage or nag or tease or whatever we end up doing to each other with it and it’s actually really cool and I think I will like it a lot. It appeals to the..shall we say…tedious (some would say retentive)…side of me. There is a lot of good info on the site and it keeps track of a lot of great stuff for you without having to pay for the “gold” membership. I may consider paying for the added perks, though if it keeps me happier because I’m tired of being sad all the time. We will see how that goes.

Anyway, I decided I should weigh myself to put in the right weight for the chart thingy which I was SUPER dubious about because we had our first cheat day (which will be the topic for another post) and it was like 3:30 am, so not exactly ideal weighing conditions, but I figured I probably couldn’t be much more miserable than I had already been (unless I had gained weight, but I didn’t really think that was going to have happened) and it was a FESTIVUS MIRACLE! According to the new scale, I have lost 5 pounds!!!!

So at that rate, I will be dead before I reach my goal weight, but whatever. It’s progress at least so I will take it and hopefully things will start looking up and maybe if I am not so freaking miserable all the time, I can actually get a little more exercise in (we got the wii fit plus and some other games…yet another post) and it will go a bit faster.